Budapest, Week 1

I think I've had more comments on the mugs than anything else!  Yes, I do collect these, but I knew I wouldn't be able to carry them around with me, so now I just collect the pictures.

Our first week in Budapest was a big change of pace in a few different ways.  Ideally we would have found an apartment for our three weeks here, but since it's high season not much was available.  Instead we're settled into two hotel rooms and I'm happy that I can say "settled" for three weeks.

 Also, after quite a few days of cool temperatures and rain, we endured a week of temperatures near 100, looking for any activity in Budapest that would keep us cool.

We spent one hot day at Palatinus Strand on an island in the Danube.  This was a huge complex with 4 water slides, 2 thermal pools, and about 10 other pools.

The girls spent their time doing this...

...while I spent my day doing this.  A win-win!

We stayed from noon until the sun went down and the park closed.

Desperate times call for desperate measures.  Our hotel does not have air conditioning so we took a day trip to IKEA.

I can see now that the yellow letters spell I-K-E-A, but after an hour of hot travel to get here, the skies opened up and I just saw the letters A-C!!

Plus nothing can top their cheap Swedish meatballs

Zoli (one of the Innotec guys) and his wife, Annett, invited us to kayak with them on a dammed up part of the Danube.  My nephew, Bobby, and his friend, Josiah, are also here interning for Innotec so we spent a fun couple of hours on the river.

A big vacation spot in Hungary is Lake Balaton, about an hour away from Budapest.  Quite different from the Lake Michigan beaches we're used to, but it was a cute little area and we so appreciated the opportunity to cool off in fresh water.

On Friday, Innotec Magyar (Hungary) had a special celebration lunch.  A huge pot of Hungarian stew and pasta was made for everyone.  Amazing food and we had a fun time touring the plant and meeting many of the team members.

Apparently this is the Hungarian version of freecycle (Mike gave it a much more colorful name that I shall not repeat on the blog).  At the end of each month, people can put stuff they don't want on the street (this may also go for evictions?).  We saw these big piles everywhere with people digging through them.  The girls saw lots of room furnishing possibilities and were so disappointed that we aren't able to transport it home.

Poland

Well, would you believe I had this post all captioned and ready to send and lost it.  So I had to grieve the loss and build up some new strength before I could think about trying again :).

We're now settled in Budapest for a couple weeks while Mike works, but here's a glimpse at our last week of travels through Eastern Europe:

In Lithuania and northern Poland, many of the farms have these stork nest poles.  They believe storks bring harmony to the family.  Might have to find a way to build one on top of our car as we travel!

And we timed it right--almost every nest had babies in it

Still a little too much of this as we traveled :(

In Lithuania, we traveled to the coast to see a big vacation peninsula called the Curonian Spit.  Unfortunately the rain continued so we had to imagine how pretty it would be on a clear day.  There were beaches all along the coast and a couple of really cute resort towns.

Halfway down the Curonian Spit is the border between Lithuania and Russia.  Mike thought he would just ask if there was a way we could continue down the road without a Russian visa.  Gotta give him high marks for chutzpah, but the answer was still "Nyet".

Interesting geography factoid:  Between Lithuania and Poland is another separate part of Russia called Kaliningrad.  I never knew this existed until we mapped out our trip from Lithuania to Poland and realized we'd have to add another 5 hours to our travel time to go around Russia.  At a couple of spots, we were traveling right along the border.

Shortly after crossing into northern Poland, we came to this marker called TriPoints--where the borders of Lithuania, Poland, and Russia meet.

Guess which of the three borders was highly fenced in and had signs stating "no photos", "do not step near the fence".  And guess which Lanser ignored all of those.

And when the ride gets a little long, it's time for a dance party!

Our first stop in Poland was Gdansk, a city recommended by someone who used to live in Poland.  Really, how many times can I say this, but it was a beautiful old city.

Our hotel was in a former convent building

Why is it that we always seem to end up on the top floors?  But I'm proud of the girls.  They just strap on their bags and get it done!

Planning the events of the day

Climbed up a bell tower to get amazing views of the city.  Hard to know which one to choose--the views were equally beautiful on all 4 sides.  During the war, almost 90% of the old architecture in Gdansk was destroyed, but the city went about rebuilding most of it.

Just a few kilometers down the road from Gdansk was this amazing Baltic Sea beach town called Sopot.  Wide, white sand beaches that stretched as far as you could see in both directions.  And the rain and clouds are gone, so we had a perfect afternoon there.

There was also a huge walking pier

On our way south, we made one more stop to tour Malbork Castle.  The castle was built by the Teutonic Order (crusaders), completed in 1406, and is the largest castle in the world by surface area.

Our next day was spent in Lodz, Poland.  Earlier in our trip, Trina had read a book called "Yellow Star" (recommended!) about a woman who was a child survivor of the Lodz Ghetto in WWII.  Trina really wanted to visit and see some of the places she talked about in the book.  We first visited Survivors Park and then got a map to tour the old ghetto and see some buildings still standing.

One of our first stops was the Jewish Cemetery.  The cemetery was huge and most of the gravestones pre-dated the war.  The cemetery now looks like this because no family was left to care for the graves.  Also, one corner of the cemetery was used to bury over 45,000 people who died in the Lodz Ghetto.

One of the big mausoleums in the Jewish Cemetery was for a family named Poznanski.  He owned a number of weaving/textile factories which have now been renovated into a huge shopping/entertainment complex called Manufaktura.  Shops and restaurants all around and in the middle sand volleyball pits, playground, carousel.  Fun place!

This is typical of where we've been staying.  We drive up in a somewhat sketchy area and see a sketchy looking building--but then discover the inside is very nice.  The owner of this one, Igor, told us over the phone "Inner is better".  Indeed--this one was very modern and newly redecorated (but as usual, on the top floor).

Our last stop in Poland was Krakow.  We spent our evening enjoying the life in the city square, had a whirlwind tour of the city the following day, and then hit the road for Budapest.

Bad photo but I had to leave it in just for you, Ms. Leisa.  It's the Rat Lady!

The main square, Rynek Glowny, which is one of the largest squares in Europe.

Many of the castles have these to-scale models with everything labeled in Braille.  Such a cool idea!

We visited another great fellowship in Krakow.  I'm not sure this church even had a name.  Two elders are the teachers, the focus is on music/message/fellowship and a number of churches are connected through "apostleship" pairs who regularly visit and keep them accountable.

So that was mostly a lighter look at our travels through Poland.  But we also visited some important WWII sites, the most sobering being Auschwitz.

Entering the camp under the "Arbeit Macht Frei" (work makes you free) sign

One display was an entire room full of these labeled suitcases, taken from the prisoners as they were sent to the gas chambers

The Wall of Execution or death wall.  I couldn't believe how the Nazis thought through every little detail and the psychology of everything.  This building next door was a barracks so the windows were covered.  The background is made out of a material that would muffle the sound.  All so that prisoners wouldn't really know what was happening.

The double fence around the camp

After walking through Auschwitz, we were bused to Birkenau, also known as Auschwitz II.  Once again, I could write paragraphs of all we learned, but that's what google is for.  We were there on an incredibly hot (90s) day.  I was SO HOT just walking through Auschwitz.  But Birkenau is probably 3 or 4 kilometers away and the camp itself is 1.2km X 4 kms.  Many prisoners would walk from Auschwitz, work building barracks at Birkenau all day, and then walk back, with basically some broth for lunch.  You wouldn't last long in that heat, but then you wouldn't last long in freezing temperatures either.  Our guide said most prisoners only lived a few days.

Just days before liberation, many things at Birkenau were blown up to get rid of evidence.  This is the remains of one of the gas chambers.  Way, way in the background you can see some of the barracks still standing.  The camp was huge.

Our final stop in Krakow was the Oskar Schindler factory (of Schindler's List fame).  This museum was so much more than I expected.  One area was devoted to his story, but the museum presented all of WWII from the Polish perspective.  I didn't know that the Poles were viewed as the lowest of the low so even many non-Jewish Poles were put in camps as "political prisoners".  

The most moving part of the museum to me was the final room called "Room of Choices".  All over the walls and on each rotating piece were regrets written in different languages--"I was told to bring them bread but I ate it all myself on the way", "I would always walk in the middle so I wouldn't be the one beaten".

The Schindler factory.  The museum included a lot of video footage from the war and also stories from some of his workers.  Very interesting.

Living the Nordic-Baltic Life

OK, get ready!  Lots of destinations in the last week+:

We spent a beautiful summer Sunday in Copenhagen.  Our day began with a visit to Hillsong Copenhagen.  Didn't even know they had a church there.  Another great experience for our family--Trina loved the kids program and I continue to be impressed by the friendliness of their churches and how solid their Bible teaching is.  From there we spent the day walking around the city with the bonus of bands performing all around as part of their Jazz Festival.

Rosenborg Castle

Nyhavn--just as pretty as all the pictures!

We traveled the almost 16km Oresund Bridge to make our way from Denmark to Sweden, spending our first night in Malmo.

This was an interesting experience.  We've stayed in all kinds of places and every night is a surprise.  This guy rented out his apartment in a fairly sketchy area and crashed with a friend for the night, blessedly taking his two monster dogs with him.  He worked really hard at fixing it up for us and we still had a comfortable stay once we knew the doors were locked.

Grandma Lanser, the girls couldn't wait to show you that he had Barbapapa shampoo (for his daughter)!

We visited a Viking village

And then it was on to a day in Stockholm.  Stockholm is actually a group of islands which I didn't know, so we took a boat from place to place, eventually ending up in Gamla Stan (Old Town)

This was very typical of the architecture in Sweden and in Finland.  Mostly red houses and all these beautiful wildflowers along the road.

While in Stockholm, we made a very worthwhile visit to the Vasa Museum.  The Vasa was a 17th century warship that, after much fanfare, sunk in the Stockholm harbor twenty minutes after beginning its voyage.

In the 1990s the process began to lift the boat out of the water and restore it.  98% of it is original and they even found preserved bodies and many items within the ship.  This picture doesn't do it any justice, but it was so ornate with hundreds of statues carved into its sides.  I could only imagine the sculptor watching his hard work slowly sink to the bottom!

Our bug remover

Our sleep schedule has gotten a little topsy turvy with the long days here.  We'll often discover it's 11 pm when we think it must be about 9:00.  This picture was taken out our hostel window at 12:30 am.

Our goal in traveling north of Stockholm was to visit a tiny village called Gransfors Bruk.  A couple of years ago Mike received a special years of service gift from Innotec of three axes produced by this company.  He really wanted to visit and see where and how they were made.

Talk about a kid in a candy shop!  We started in the ax museum where we were surrounded by axes of every kind from every time period.

The girls quickly lost interest in the history of axes, but found other fun things to occupy their time.

Yup, acting like a six year old again (and the girls would want you to know that I'm talking about me, not them)

Just when we thought an ax factory couldn't get any more fun.

Time for the tour.  It was really fascinating to watch the guys pound out these ax heads with such skill.

By the end of our time, Mike was freely walking around and giving the girls his own extended tour.

Then it was on to a quick few days in Finland.  We took the ferry across from Umea, Sweden to Vaasa, Finland, then traveled south to Tampere, Turku, and finally Helsinki.  Our time there was so brief, but I really enjoyed the countryside and found the people to be some of the friendliest yet--definitely on my "return someday" list.

Found a fun playground in Turku.

Do you see Ms. Moose back there?  We were thinking Sweden and Finland were wasting their money with all their moose crossing signs and moose fencing along the roads, but finally we spotted one.

Wow--their language made my head spin!  I'm convinced they double up their letters and add lots of suffixes just to confuse the tourists.  I think this basically said "Don't park here"

Most homes in Finland have saunas so we got to experience one in the home we rented near Helsinki.

Had a quick day in Helsinki before catching a ferry from Finland to Estonia.

While waiting for the ferry, we discovered this fun antique shop down the road.

Finland--where 70s TV show games go to die.

OK, so since there are so many pictures, I'm trying to keep the writing to a minimum.  But here we need a little story/sermon/soapbox.  Our day in Tallinn, Estonia was a Sunday so Celia and Mike found an English speaking church for us to attend.  Everything seemed normal until the message began.  I've heard about the "prosperity gospel" and even been told that some churches teach it, but I had no idea how awful it was until I heard it with my own ears.  First I started by writing notes about what the pastor was saying but then I decided I needed to write his direct quotes or I would never believe it was as bad as I remembered.  One example:  "If you obey God, you will come to a place where you will have wealth."  I was so thankful that within minutes I saw the girls whispering to each other about how wrong it was.  Ella even did our family devotions on it that evening--talking about all the things he took out of context and twisted to say things that the Bible never said.  I was so angry and so sad.  Here's this congregation who, throughout years of Soviet occupation didn't have access to freedom of religion, and now they're still not getting the truth.  Mike has a plan to email the pastor :).

Enjoying the worship time before everything went downhill

We spent the rest of our day in Old Town Tallinn.  It's been a little overwhelming to visit so many historical cities; eventually they all start to blur.  But I may remember Tallinn as my favorite.  It was much more protected from destruction through the years so huge parts of the wall and towers are still intact, all the streets were cobblestone, and it was filled with gorgeous old buildings that now house fun shops and restaurants.

From Tallinn we chose to travel westward so we could start to follow the coast of the Gulf of Riga and eventually the Baltic Sea.  Our big bummer is that we've had an entire week of clouds/rain/cool weather.  From Sweden until now, everyone is talking about how they're experiencing one of the coldest summers ever.  But the heavy clouds made for a cool sunset over the Gulf of Riga:

We've found a part of the world untouched by Starbucks, so time to get creative:

This time it was Old Town Riga, Latvia

On the way to Riga, we found this area with red sandstone cliffs and had some fun on the beach.

At the smoked fish shop

This is Jurmala Beach, Latvia, just west of Riga, known as the French Riviera of the Baltics.  A big summer destination for Russians.  

This is Karnosta Prison near Liepaja, Latvia.  Originally built to be an infirmary, it was instead used as a military prison during Soviet occupation.  We took a tour that was done more as a "reality" tour--treating us like prisoners.

Visiting the Chief Commander's office

I got distracted by the Russian typewriter.

Here in Latvia/Lithuania, deer fences are used instead of moose fences.  They have these cool spinning gates so the deer can get into the forest but never get out.

One more beach shot in Liepaja, Latvia on the Baltic Sea.  I know I have a reader who wants to experience every beach in the world, so I include all these shots for her (Hello, Jill?)